2023 Discussion Thread

[80Tiger 899]

9 hours ago, AUDevil said:

A coach’s 2nd/3rd recruiting classes at a top tier SEC school should almost always be top 10 or better classes.  Coaches have hopium and vision to sell without being tied down by a negative track record.  It typically doesn’t get easier.  If you’re  waiting on a dynamic 2022 season to save Harsin’s recruiting then you’ll be very disappointed.  Whiffing as badly as we’ve done on a deep and talented state class is troubling.  It’s almost like no matter what he does the kids refuse to commit.  I think he’s a dead man walking already.

Top five wording right here; "HOPIUM"

[abw0004 10,110]

7 hours ago, au302 said:

Guys Harsin himself may not be a good recruiter but we have good recruiters on staff who are struggling. Y'all think Zac and CRob forgot how to recruit suddenly? Does Zac suck so bad that he can't even get 0 star Hart from Loachapoka on board immediately? Why can't Caddy seem to close on Cobb yet? Ike's sure been quiet, is he awkward around recruits too?

Nope. These are good recruiters. It's that we are in a holding pattern because the staff has been put at gunpoint to win now or else. It's not an excuse, they've made mistakes and had their share of misses, but negative recruiting is a b**** and kids want to see if they'll be around before they commit. It sucks, no excuse, but it's reality right now.

Typically I would agree with this but Etheridge and Caddy are the only reason we have the recruits on board that we currently have.  Caddy is also the only reason Tank didn’t transfer.

To Mikey’s credit, he is right that we have been negatively recruited against for many years now, but we’re still able to close on very good prospects.

This is going to be a black eye if Harsin manages to push away a recruit whose legal name is our university itself.  That’s about as bad as losing a certain LB recruit with Auburn tattooed on his forearm many years ago. 

[abw0004 10,110]

On 6/21/2022 at 6:32 PM, abw0004 said:

Well, it seems that it wouldn’t be unreasonable to ask you do a deep dive on the top 100 colleges as well so we can have a more accurate description.  Could you do that by Monday please?

@Zeek, it’s Monday…

[Hank2020 3,199]

37 minutes ago, abw0004 said:

Typically I would agree with this but Etheridge and Caddy are the only reason we have the recruits on board that we currently have.  Caddy is also the only reason Tank didn’t transfer.

To Mikey’s credit, he is right that we have been negatively recruited against for many years now, but we’re still able to close on very good prospects.

This is going to be a black eye if Harsin manages to push away a recruit whose legal name is our university itself.  That’s about as bad as losing a certain LB recruit with Auburn tattooed on his forearm many years ago. 

$$$ tends to do that!!

[Sizzle 3,909]

9 hours ago, AuburnNTexas said:

Texas buys their recruits.

I’m sure we do too but we’re getting out recruited and outbid 

[Mikey 16,575]

2 hours ago, Hank2020 said:

Yes, but that is on auburn not existing coaching staff.

The coaching staff and whoever is putting up the money have to work together. How else would the money side know who to offer what? For the NIL thing to work properly there has to be a lot of secret information passed back and forth. That's in spite of NCAA rules to the contrary.

If AU isn't handling this NIL situation in a successful manner, then the failure is on everyone involved, on both ends.

[Hank2020 3,199]

1 minute ago, Mikey said:

The coaching staff and whoever is putting up the money have to work together. How else would the money side know who to offer what? For the NIL thing to work properly there has to be a lot of secret information passed back and forth. That's in spite of NCAA rules to the contrary.

If AU isn't handling this NIL situation in a successful manner, then the failure is on everyone involved, on both ends.

If they are following the requirements of the compliance group, coaching staff is out of it.

[Mikey 16,575]

1 minute ago, Hank2020 said:

If they are following the requirements of the compliance group, coaching staff is out of it.

That's true. Following the requirements of the compliance staff will also put AU out of the NIL business. For example, Texas boosters paying some hot prospect $ 1 million without at least a nod of approval from the Texas head coach would be madness.

Illegal or not, there has to be communication among the parties involved. If we aren't communicating, we're toast.

[tinman1 485]

Auburn's NIL money ( or lack thereof) isn't hurting Bruce & basketball recruiting. Same with gymnastics, softball and baseball.   (Not sure about equestrian).😀  I think we AU fans may be using NIL as a crutch to explain our poor football recruiting.

[1auburn1 1,110]

10 hours ago, Mikey said:

Everybody who gets top recruits is buying them these days. If we are unable or unwilling to make the purchases it's going to be a long trip to the bottom of the SEC.

The trip is getting shorter every day....

[PotPot 161]

4 minutes ago, tinman1 said:

Auburn's NIL money ( or lack thereof) isn't hurting Bruce & basketball recruiting. Same with gymnastics, softball and baseball.   (Not sure about equestrian).😀  I think we AU fans may be using NIL as a crutch to explain our poor football recruiting.

I don’t know how NIL is affecting, or not affecting, football recruiting but Bruce Pearl just literally lost a recruit to Tennessee because they paid him more. Gymnastics, softball, equestrian are not revenue generating sports so NIL will probably have a negligible effect on them. 

[JerryAU 1,657]

10 hours ago, au302 said:

Guys Harsin himself may not be a good recruiter but we have good recruiters on staff who are struggling. Y'all think Zac and CRob forgot how to recruit suddenly? Does Zac suck so bad that he can't even get 0 star Hart from Loachapoka on board immediately? Why can't Caddy seem to close on Cobb yet? Ike's sure been quiet, is he awkward around recruits too?

Nope. These are good recruiters. It's that we are in a holding pattern because the staff has been put at gunpoint to win now or else. It's not an excuse, they've made mistakes and had their share of misses, but negative recruiting is a b**** and kids want to see if they'll be around before they commit. It sucks, no excuse, but it's reality right now.

With NIL and the transfer portal wide open top recruits don't even know how long they will be around.  A staff now has to re-recruit their own rosters daily right now, kids are jumping to the highest bidder through the portal.  

$$$$$ has a much louder voice than negative recruiting does these days. 

 

[AuburnNTexas 7,138]

1 hour ago, Mikey said:

That's true. Following the requirements of the compliance staff will also put AU out of the NIL business. For example, Texas boosters paying some hot prospect $ 1 million without at least a nod of approval from the Texas head coach would be madness.

Illegal or not, there has to be communication among the parties involved. If we aren't communicating, we're toast.

We all know Auburn has one of the toughest compliance staff's in the NCAA this has been both a blessing and a curse. It has kept us out of trouble but over the years has probably cost us some recruits. After what happened with Harsin we all know he is on a short lease if he does anything crooked and is caught he is gone. So his options are not to interfere in NIL or do like Mikey says and let the boosters know what players we need and how much it will take. If he does the first and gets canned he probably can't find a new position but if he does the second what happens if the boosters don't come up with the moola. 

Gus had some really highly rated classes but some of the issues many had with Gus was class balance (not getting enough O-Line) and he went after top dog O-line and fought for them till the end of the cycle but had no backup plan if he didn't get them.

Lets compare this versus what we are seeing with Harsin He went hard after Vizzina but when we lost on him  early on in the cycle he found his backup Brock Glenn who while some others had recruited him at the time he was not highly rated and yet he still went after him hard as he and hour coaches saw his potential.  I remember some of the Posters who are getting on Harsin because it looks like we won't get Brock being upset that we were settling for him when our staff went after him because he was not highly rated at that time.

When Brock came back from his official visit he was gushing about how well it went but did not commit. The OSU came along but he didn't gush about that visit now we hear FSU. While we were not the first to get on Brock we got there a lot earlier then the ones like OSU and FSU. We rolled out the red carpet and he gushed about Kiessau and Gus. 

It is looking more and more to me that we are either intentionally not matching other schools on NIL or that we are for some reason not able to match other schools on NIL.  I can understand not matching the big money boys like Texas, Texas A&M, etc. as they have more big money supporters then most schools but if we can't match FSU there is an issue.

We have seen the effort this year by the staff to reach out to players we have brought in a ton of O-Linemen so even if we don't get the ones we want the most we do seem to have some solid backups that we would have to develop.

I am not sure why we can't get commitments at this time. Is it the Albatross of the February investigation? Is it an ill designed and implemented NIL package? Is it because our Compliance team is handicapping our coaches? Is it our coaches are just not good enough recruiters?  If it is because of the Albatross and negative recruiting around it the only chance we have is a good season to overcome the negative recruiting. If it is NIL then we are screwed but sadly won't be able to prove that was the issue. If it because of our Compliance again we are screwed but at least we are running a very clean program.  If it is because our coaches are not very good recruiters then we are screwed but in a year or two will replace them. 

Edited June 27, 2022 by AuburnNTexas

[AuburnNTexas 7,138]

35 minutes ago, tinman1 said:

Auburn's NIL money ( or lack thereof) isn't hurting Bruce & basketball recruiting. Same with gymnastics, softball and baseball.   (Not sure about equestrian).😀  I think we AU fans may be using NIL as a crutch to explain our poor football recruiting.

Bruce already has a proven track record of putting players into NBA which translates into money. That said this year will be 1st year that NIL will really effect Basketball recruiting and at this time we have no players committed I trust Bruce so I am not worried. In baseball this year we did more with less talent then other schools that have always had scholarship advantages because of state Lotteries. We really don't know if NIL will have as big an impact in smaller sports. Football and basketball are the sports where players are asking for big money. Of course Suni got sweet heart NIL deals she won gold in the Olympics sponsors lined up to get her. Softball we have good players but all those were recruited before NIL so again we don't know its impact.

Gymnastics now that Olympians are competing in the NCAA is getting huge national coverage on TV so NIL will impact the non-Olympic type competitors again time will tell how Auburn does. 

Now if the stories are true even if exaggerated a bit Texas paid huge money for its O-Line class last year and Texas A&M paid huge money for its whole class from everything I have read we were slow getting NIL setup and no way were we in the same ball park as those teams in NIL. Remember unlike the other sports football has 85 Scholarship players so just because of numbers you have to pay a lot more for football to compete. 

    

[JerryAU 1,657]

We've heard everything from "Auburn's NIL is fine" to "Auburn's NIL is tanking" to "Auburn's NIL collective has been revamped and is now under excellent supervision" to "Auburn Compliance is hampering Auburn's NIL efforts" ....blah blah blah.

It's pretty obvious considering we do have some very good recruiters on staff, that Auburn's NIL is not currently in the same market as other programs and therefore it's not attracting top prospects even in our own State. 

[CR 2,438]

12 hours ago, Sizzle said:

Steve Sarkisian didn’t have a good first year at Texas and not only did he land Arch Manning earlier this week he just got 5 commitments TODAY, 4 of them were OL. We don’t have enough good recruiters on staff and it’s killing us. 

Ethridge and other assistants cant overcome a HC and two coordinators who are giving little help closing the deal on recruits.

[Sizzle 3,909]

16 minutes ago, CR said:

Ethridge and other assistants cant overcome a HC and two coordinators who are giving little help closing the deal on recruits.

I’m not worried about Etheridge or Caddy. They’re going to get results. But everybody else just not getting it done so far

[cole256 17,042]

This isn't new though......it's not just now that Auburn fell off as far as recruiting. This started around when smart was hired at uga.

Pretty much when we started losing guys to Clemson and uga consistently is when we fell off. Now the only way to get it back is consistent winning because Deion Sanders is the only coach that could come in this area and just start competing with the brands of bammer, uga, and Clemson. Also the average player that this fan base really gravitates to isn't a memorable personality that will inspire future generations to remember and want to emulate. 

Pretty much the type personality and people that could shake stuff up isn't going to fit in the culture here. Right now this fan base is more if a beta mind set. What we are is a super conservative button your shirt to the top, tuck in your socks type of school and it shows. 

There's nothing cool about us, and little things like going under armour and most of our fan base not having the slightest understanding on how that puts us at a disadvantage is an example to what I'm talking about

Edited June 27, 2022 by cole256

[AUwent 3,747]

5 minutes ago, cole256 said:

Now the only way to get it back is consistent winning because Deion Sanders is the only coach that could come in this area and just start competing with the brands of bammer, uga, and Clemson. Also the average player that this fan base really gravitates to isn't a memorable personality that will inspire future generations to remember and want to emulate. 

I too have been wishing for Prime. But Dell could do the job too (and is probs more realistic) which is why I think we should give him a call when the search inevitably happens.

Edited June 27, 2022 by AUwent

[AuburnNTexas 7,138]

2 minutes ago, cole256 said:

This isn't new though......it's not just now that Auburn fell off as far as recruiting. This started around when smart was hired at uga.

Pretty much when we started losing guys to Clemson and uga consistently is when we fell off. Now the only way to get it back is consistent winning because Deion Sanders is the only coach that could come in this area and just start competing with the brands of bammer, uga, and Clemson. Also the average player that this fan base really gravitates to isn't a memorable personality that will inspire future generations to remember and want to emulate. 

Pretty much the type personality and people that could shake stuff up isn't going to fit in the culture here. Right now this fan base is more if a beta mind set. What we are is a super conservative button your shirt to the top, tuck in your socks type of school and it shows. 

You are 100% right that it started with UGA and Clemson.  For years we competed very well in Ga with UGA  they probably won more as the in state School but we still got our fair share. Then Clemson came along and our fair share diminished then Kirby and our share got smaller plus many of the one we got from Ga. were not as highly rated.

I agree Auburn is Coat and Tie type school and probably would not hire somebody like Deion.  I like Deion and his personality and he has really gotten Recruiting going at his school with the #1 RB in the country now lets see how his team does on the field he has shown he can recruit but how good he is in the X's and O's and in teaching I will have to wait and see.  If he dominates with his talent this year and I see a well prepared invested team I would not be adverse to strongly considering and even hiring him assuming Hardin doesn't pull a rabbit out of his hat and turn this team around.

[JerryAU 1,657]

5 minutes ago, AuburnNTexas said:

You are 100% right that it started with UGA and Clemson.  For years we competed very well in Ga with UGA  they probably won more as the in state School but we still got our fair share. Then Clemson came along and our fair share diminished then Kirby and our share got smaller plus many of the one we got from Ga. were not as highly rated.

I agree Auburn is Coat and Tie type school and probably would not hire somebody like Deion.  I like Deion and his personality and he has really gotten Recruiting going at his school with the #1 RB in the country now lets see how his team does on the field he has shown he can recruit but how good he is in the X's and O's and in teaching I will have to wait and see.  If he dominates with his talent this year and I see a well prepared invested team I would not be adverse to strongly considering and even hiring him assuming Hardin doesn't pull a rabbit out of his hat and turn this team around.

P. Diddy just pledged $1million to Jackson State and Howard at the BET awards this weekend.  Deion "Prime Time" is smiling.  😁

[Beaker 2,457]

1 hour ago, AuburnNTexas said:

We all know Auburn has one of the toughest compliance staff's in the NCAA this has been both a blessing and a curse. It has kept us out of trouble but over the years has probably cost us some recruits. After what happened with Harsin we all know he is on a short lease if he does anything crooked and is caught he is gone. So his options are not to interfere in NIL or do like Mikey says and let the boosters know what players we need and how much it will take. If he does the first and gets canned he probably can't find a new position but if he does the second what happens if the boosters don't come up with the moola. 

Gus had some really highly rated classes but some of the issues many had with Gus was class balance (not getting enough O-Line) and he went after top dog O-line and fought for them till the end of the cycle but had no backup plan if he didn't get them.

Lets compare this versus what we are seeing with Harsin He went hard after Vizzina but when we lost on him  early on in the cycle he found his backup Brock Glenn who while some others had recruited him at the time he was not highly rated and yet he still went after him hard as he and hour coaches saw his potential.  I remember some of the Posters who are getting on Harsin because it looks like we won't get Brock being upset that we were settling for him when our staff went after him because he was not highly rated at that time.

When Brock came back from his official visit he was gushing about how well it went but did not commit. The OSU came along but he didn't gush about that visit now we hear FSU. While we were not the first to get on Brock we got there a lot earlier then the ones like OSU and FSU. We rolled out the red carpet and he gushed about Kiessau and Gus. 

It is looking more and more to me that we are either intentionally not matching other schools on NIL or that we are for some reason not able to match other schools on NIL.  I can understand not matching the big money boys like Texas, Texas A&M, etc. as they have more big money supporters then most schools but if we can't match FSU there is an issue.

We have seen the effort this year by the staff to reach out to players we have brought in a ton of O-Linemen so even if we don't get the ones we want the most we do seem to have some solid backups that we would have to develop.

I am not sure why we can't get commitments at this time. Is it the Albatross of the February investigation? Is it an ill designed and implemented NIL package? Is it because our Compliance team is handicapping our coaches? Is it our coaches are just not good enough recruiters?  If it is because of the Albatross and negative recruiting around it the only chance we have is a good season to overcome the negative recruiting. If it is NIL then we are screwed but sadly won't be able to prove that was the issue. If it because of our Compliance again we are screwed but at least we are running a very clean program.  If it is because our coaches are not very good recruiters then we are screwed but in a year or two will replace them. 

Super insightful and thanks!.

I also recall hearing that we don't have an comparable degree program that aligns with a lot of universities where players are getting  some kind sports management degree.   I am not saying that is the name, just similar.  Then when they try to transfer in - they don't have enough credits or similar hurdles.  This is what happened with the guard from U of Ark that was going to transfer, but couldn't.    This is a major stinking hurdle that Auburn has to fix!

So.....we need to establish a similar degree program to receive transfers because the  portal is critical, but if they can't transfer most of their credits, they are not coming. 

[W.E.D 11,070]

15 hours ago, JBiGGiE said:

It's only June...

Hold this line and see where it gets you.  Most top kids are doing all their OVs over the summer and wrapping things up before the season starts.  Dec NSD has moved the calendar way up.

Keep claiming it's early and we're going to be left empty just like our last two classes.

[AUGoo 2,659]

3 hours ago, tinman1 said:

Auburn's NIL money ( or lack thereof) isn't hurting Bruce & basketball recruiting. Same with gymnastics, softball and baseball.   (Not sure about equestrian).😀  I think we AU fans may be using NIL as a crutch to explain our poor football recruiting.

It's only a matter of time.

[AUGoo 2,659]

2 hours ago, AuburnNTexas said:

We all know Auburn has one of the toughest compliance staff's in the NCAA....

The problem is there is no compliance with the NIL system now in place.  It's the wild west and we are still playing by 1990 rules.  I understand how we got here.  I just think we have been burned enough times trying to play by the Big Players rules and getting slapped down, that we're twice shy about going out on the limb with the rest of The Players.